“RIM drew attention at Mobile World Congress this morning by confirming and showing off a new web browser for the BlackBerry based on WebKit,” Electronista reports.
“By using largely the same engine as Apple’s Safari or Google’s Chrome, the browser now loads pages much faster and is much more accurate,” Electronista reports. “It can handle complex AJAX, CSS and HTML5, and is one of the few mobile browsers to get a perfect score on the ACID3 web standards test.”
Direct link via YouTube here.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Thanks, Apple. You’re welcome, RIM.
Cool! As a web developer, this is great! I hope one day to see some serious competition.
Oh Lord! Just watching this guy trying to navigate the browser’s screen was painful. Once you use the multi-touch of the iPhone everybody else who is still using a controller seems like the user’s fingers were cut off.
Apple: Thanks KDE! You’re Welcome, Apple.
The interface looks like it’s 2004 anyway.
Wow, navigating a webpage on a Blackberry must be great for improving your clitoris-manipulation skills.
@Bubbles,
LOL!!!!
@ Bubbles,
I suppose so if your a thumb man, that is..
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Just one point worth noting. Once RIM goes production with this, the only mobile OS vendor **not** using a WebKit-based browser will be Microsoft.
What amazes me about Microsoft is that they’d rather use an inferior technology than use a freely available open source product. They wouldn’t have even had to spend many resources porting WebKit to their OS. There are a fair number of WebKit ports to Windows Mobile available. Heck, Torch Mobile (whose technology RIM is using for this WebKit port) was selling a Windows Mobile version of WebKit prior to their acquisition by RIM.
– HCE
And WebKit adoption drives HTML5 adoption, which continues to undermine the need for browser plugins like Flash or Silverlight (especially in the mobile space).
Where’s that guy who was ranting how mobile web developers were only designing for mobile Safari. If all the browsers are WebKit based, shouldn’t they all work pretty well? Now we have iPhone, Knockia S60, Android, WebOS, and Rim all using WebKit rendered browsers.
@ HCE – I hadn’t thought of that!
Are MS still going forward with using IE6 (of all things) as the future basis for their mobile browser? If so, then they’re going to be in a world of hurt, now that so many websites are dropping IE6 support (Google one of the most prominent examples).
I don’t care how fast it renders or what Acid score it gets, that navigation just looked painful. those left-side menus were tiny.
makes one shudder at the thought of where we’d be if apple hadn’t entered the smartphone game.
What Gabriel said, in a nutshell: More Webkit = No Flash, no Silverlight.
Now it’s not so amazing that Microsoft does not use a Webkit-based browser. Good luck with that, boyz…
My thumb is tired. Need more practice to build up endurance.
@Gabriel
I don’t know what version of IE their mobile browser is based on. Reports on places like Engadget say that it is “based on the desktop version of the browser” – whatever that means.
Engadget had a quick hands-on with the new OS and was fairly positive about everything *except* the browser. I guess Microsoft could improve it by the time it is released but I don’t see the point. They have no chance of getting a Mobile browser monopoly – so they might as well go with WebKit which has now become a de-facto mobile standard.
– HCE
Yet none of these competitors copying Apple play by play will thank them. Instead they insult Apple or advertise as if they came up with these amazing stuff on their phones wihout any influence from Apple.
Out of interest, is Nokia still claiming its browser is ‘Safari’? And is Firefox not used by any mobiles as their de facto browser?
What happened to webkit.org? I’ve never seen it down.
This brings tremendous validation and value to the cross platform mobile webkit apps we’ve been building… all if a sudden my blackberry friends will be able to see my work and realize why they need to get a device that is no so painful to navigate.
Funny I didn’t know my MBP or other PC’s around the house all use multi-touch when browsing.
Accept that the mobile market it bigger than Apple and many people do not like touch based devices. It’s not one way and others all fail. The optical pad Blackberries are quick to navigate so no clit spinning needed.
If RIM can improve web rendering and speed it will be a much needed improvement.
Well,
at least this supports HTML5.
Ya hear Adobe!
You can stick your F…
Wow. That looks hard to use, even for someone who is obviously used to using it.
They could still use Flash if they wanted. They did not show how video would work on it. I love the MS ad that they showed, they could have picked a better webpage to show. The mobile space is becoming a force in web design. If mobile browsers don’t support Flash or it causes problems when they do than the move to HTML5 will be faster than people think.